tom araya : christian

slayer played stockholm recently, which reminded me of what an interesting specimen their lead singer, tom araya, is. as a singer for the thrash metal band slayer, a band whose album titles include hell awaits, south of heaven, god hates us all and christ illusion,his job besides playing bass is pretty much to scream lyrics like these :

Religion is hate Religion is fear Religion is war

Religion is rape Religion's obscene Religion's a whore

The desolace of Jesus Christ There never was a sacrifice To land him on the crucifix He rode the cup of purity Infectious in facility I've made my choice Six six six
​

Existing on damnation's edge
The priest had never known To witness such a violent show Of power overthrown

Angels fighting aimlessly Still dying by the sword Our legions killing all in sight To get the one called Lord

The Gates of Hell lie waiting as you see There's no price to pay just follow me I can take your lost soul from the grave Jesus knows your soul can not be saved

Crucify the so called Lord He soon shall fall to me Your souls are damned your God has fell To slave for me eternally Hell awaits...​

and so on...regardless of the fact that their guitarist kerry king writes most of the anti-religion lyrics, they're all sung by mr.araya. so i dug around a bit and found this interesting interview :

[...]

Nothing is ever quite as it seems. For example, the most evil band in the world is really not that evil, after all. Slayer's singer, Tom Araya, was raised Catholic, as was drummer Dave Lombardo. And since Slayer's inception in 1982 to Tuesday's show at the Shaw Conference Centre, "It's all about the cool factor - that's the main point," Araya insists during a recent phone interview before the band's show in Houston, Texas. "If something we find is really cool and gory and graphic, we'll go with it." The "most evil band in the world" is a loaded claim and even though June 6, 2006, was declared National Slayer Day, by global Hessians (metalheads), the Internet offers many "evil'' alternates, from Slipknot to Britney Spears. [...]They decided the new band needed an image and, coming from Southern California, looked toward Hollywood for inspiration. "We didn't want to look like all the hair bands that were coming out at the time. "We didn't want to look like girls; we wanted to look like a bunch of guys putting on makeup like guys. That was a must," explains Araya. "So we did everything completely opposite of that, which included the dark image, you know, that whole Satan vibe. And our first album being Side 6 Side 66, people were really freaking out over that." Images of pentagrams, horned beasts and bloody pits of hell fire have always been associated with Slayer, visually and lyrically. But according to Araya, there are really no issues between his Catholic faith and the band's subject matter. "Kerry's written some really far out s---," admits Araya. "If it's a good song, I'm not one that's going to go, 'This sucks because it's contrary to my beliefs.' To me it's more like, 'This is really good stuff. You're going to **** people off with this.' "People have these heavy issues and ask, 'Isn't this a problem for you?' and no. I'm well-rounded, I have a really strong belief system and these are just words and they'll never interfere with what I believe and how I feel," he continues. "People are not in good shape to where they have to question their own belief system because of a book or a story somebody wrote, or a Slayer song."

I see no problem with their music being against Tom's beliefs. I've gigged with a couple of Christian bands before, and although I'm rather anti-christian, I've still gone out and sang the part. It's like playing dress-up, or celebrating halloween.

For many metla-heads they take satanic lyrics as serious as horror films, though I admit (heck I've shown examples) of those who go further.

I see no problem or contradiction with Tom's lyrics or Tom singing Kerry's Lyrics. He's by no measure a mainstream catholic or a conservative catholic. The bottom line is he views what he does as art. Satan is the evil in all men and to deny that it exists, to deny all those dark things that people like Freud and Lovecraft hint at exisitng in our minds, is to give them power.